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Nothing of the sort. I hate this way of life. The situation created by the security agencies in Chechnya, and primarily by members of the FSB and Ministry of Defence, is so disgusting it makes me sick; a situation where a journalist’s legitimate wish to be in possession of the full facts about an event results in direct threats to her life. What was I doing during those two days in Shatoy? My work, for heaven’s sake, no more than that. Believe me, there is nothing more hateful than, in your own country, to feel that you are a target for shooting practice for parasites living it up, eating and drinking at your – a taxpayer’s – expense. And then they have the gall to denigrate you.

Traditionally journalists do not write about how they get their facts. The reader’s attention should be focused only on those facts themselves. That is entirely proper. Forgive me that today I have had to deviate from that ideal, reluctantly finding myself on the receiving end of a barrage of lies and conjecture.

A detailed report of my assignment in Shatoy will appear in the next issue. This will be the result of an investigation into the brutal murder of six civilians in Shatoy District, and I shall say no more about how I came by the facts. Only today, before I bring down the curtain, I will allow myself a few conclusions about the events which surrounded this inquiry.

In the first place, conditions for journalists working in Chechnya have been made completely impossible. I mean in terms of obtaining comprehensive information about an event.

In the second place, the unjustified, barefaced lies of the Army Command, passed on by most of the media without any attempt to check them out, are at the core of the world we now live in. More and more we are allowing ourselves to be brainwashed. It is a world where the Russian Army is encouraged to hunt civilians, including journalists, but not the terrorist leader Khattab.

And in the third place, many of my journalist colleagues, dancing to the tune of the state authorities and the Army top brass, are today prepared to do anything required of them, to report interviews without worrying about the truth, to write about scandals even when there are none, and all in order to avoid having to confront directly the fratricidal tragedy being perpetrated in Chechnya. That is what really matters about the mishaps which befell me on my last assignment, and which ended on February 12.

Anna Politkovskaya

FROM THE EDITORS

Novaya gazeta thanks General Victor Kazantsev, Plenipotentiary Presidential Representative in the Southern Federal Region, and many others for responding to our request to assist in the search for our special correspondent, Anna Politkovskaya.

We thank the Directorate of Personal Security of the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation, and also the Secretariat of Presidential Aide Sergey Yastrzhembsky for helping to establish the whereabouts of our special correspondent after the incident in the Shatoy district of Chechnya.

IS JOURNALISM WORTH DYING FOR?

November 10, 2003

Is journalism worth dying for? Every time something like the events on the evening of November 3 in Ryazan happen – and in Russia attempts to kill journalists are no rarity – we, the servants and slaves of information, ask ourselves this question. If the price of truth is so high, perhaps we should just stop, and find a profession with less risk of “major unpleasantness”? How much would society, for whose sake we are doing this work, care? In the face of that, each of us makes his or her own choice.

On November 3, 2003, at approximately 2104 hours, at the entrance to residential block No. 26, Zubkova Street in Ryazan, an attempt was made on the life of 30-year-old Mikhail Komarov, Deputy Editor of the Ryazan edition of Novaya gazeta. As he was returning home he was struck from behind on the head with a heavy blunt instrument. Komarov’s reporting is well known in Ryazan, and in recent years he has specialised in investigative journalism, some of it delving into the commercial activities of the local oligarchs.

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